But when our country's cause provokes to arms, How martial music every bosom warms! So when the first bold vessel dared the seas, High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain,
While Argo saw her kindred trees Descend from Pelion to the main. Transported demi-gods stood round, And men grew heroes at the sound, Inflamed with glory's charms: Each chief his sevenfold shield displayed, And half unsheathed the shining blade And seas, and rocks, and skies rebound, To arms, to arms, to arms!
But when through all th' infernal bounds, Which flaming Phlegethon surrounds,
Love, strong as Death, the poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appeared,
O'er all the dreary coasts!
Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,
And cries of tortured ghosts! But hark! he strikes the golden lyre; And see! the tortured ghosts respire,
See, shady forms advance!
Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still, Ixion rests upon his wheel,
And the pale spectres dance!
The Furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurled hang listening round their heads.
By the streams that ever flow, By the fragrant winds that blow O'er th' Elysian flowers; By those happy souls who dwell In yellow meads of asphodel, Or amaranthine bowers; By the hero's armed shades, Glittering through the gloomy glades, By the youths that died for love, Wandering in the myrtle grove, Restore, restore Eurydice to life: Oh take the husband, or return the wife!
He sung, and hell consented
To hear the poet's prayer: Stern Proserpine relented, And gave him back the fair. Thus song could prevail O'er death, and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious! Though fate had fast bound her With Styx nine times round her, Yet music and love were victorious.
But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes; Again she falls, again she dies, she dies! How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move? No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love. Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the fall of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in meanders,
Unheard, unknown, He makes his moan;
And calls her ghost. For ever, ever, ever lost! Now with Furies surrounded, Despairing, confounded, He trembles, he glows, Amidst Rhodope's2 snows;
See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Hæmus2 resounds with the Bacchanals'
Yet even in death Eurydice he sung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,
Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,
First follow Nature and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung. One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
FROM AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. "Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill; But, of the two, less dangerous is th' offence To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. Some few in that, but numbers err in this, Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss; A fool might once himself alone expose, Now one in verse makes many more in prose. "Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. In poets as true genius is but rare, True taste as seldom is the critic's share; Both must alike from Heaven derive their light, These born to judge, as well as those to write. Let such teach others, who themselves excel. And censure freely who have written well. Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment too? 2 A mountain of Thrace.
Know well each ancient's proper character; His fable, subject, scope in every page; Religion, country, genius of his age; Without all these at once before your eyes, Cavil you may, but never criticise. Be Homer's works your study and delight, Read them by day, and meditate by night; Thence form your judgment, thence your max- ims bring,
And trace the Muses upward to their spring. Still with itself compared, his text peruse; And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.5 When first young Maro5 in his boundless mind
The heart, and all its end at once attains. In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes, Which out of nature's common order rise, The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice. But though the ancients thus their rules invade; (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made)
Moderns beware! or if you must offend Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end; Let it be seldom, and compelled by need; And have, at least, their precedent to plead. The critic else proceeds without remorse, Seizes your fame and puts his laws in force. I know there are to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, even in them, seem
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear, Considered singly, or beheld too near, Which, but proportioned to their light or place, Due distance reconciles to form and grace. A prudent chief not always must display His powers in equal ranks, and fair array, But with th' occasion and the place comply, Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.
A work t'outlast immortal Rome designed, 131 Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, And but from nature's fountains scorned to draw;
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. 180
But when t' examine every part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design; And rules as strict his laboured work confine, As if the Stagirites o'erlooked each line. Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy nature is to copy them.
Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, For there's a happiness as well as care. Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master-hand alone can reach. If, where the rules not far enough extend,
Of all the causes which conspire to blind 201 Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. Whatever nature has in worth denied, She gives in large recruits of needful pride; For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense. If once right reason drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day. Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of every friend-and every foe.
7 The winged horse of the Muses.
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:8 There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts, 220
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange sur- prise
New distant scenes of endless science rise! So pleased at first the towering Alps we try Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
A certain bard encountering on the way, Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage, As e'er could Dennis,11 of the Grecian stage; 271
Concluding all were desperate sots and fools, Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.
And the first clouds and mountains seem the Our author, happy in a judge so nice, last;
But, those attained, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthened way, 230 Th' increasing prospect tires our wandering
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ: Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, The generous pleasure to be charmed with wit. But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow, Correctly cold, and regularly low, That shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep, We cannot blame indeed-but we may sleep. In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts; 'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all. Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,
Produced his play, and begged the knight's
Made him observe the subject, and the plot, The manners, passions, unities;12 what not? All which, exact to rule, were brought about, Were but a combat in the lists left out. "What! leave the combat out?" exclaims the knight;
Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite. 280 "Not so, by Heaven" (he answers in a rage), "Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."
So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain. "Then build a new, or act it in a plain."
Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice, Curious not knowing, not exact but nice, Form short ideas; and offend in arts, (As most in manners) by a love to parts. Some to conceit 13 alone their taste confine, And glittering thoughts struck out at every
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
(The world's just wonder, and even thine, O One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
No single parts unequally surprise, All comes united to th' admiring eyes; No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear;
The whole at once is bold, and regular. Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
In every work regard the writer's end,
Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well ex- pressed;
Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,
Since none can compass more than they intend; 10 Don Quixote (in a
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
8 At the foot of Mt. Olympus, reputed birthplace of the Muses.
spurious addition to Cervantes' work).
11 John Dennis, a critic of the time, the au- thor of unsuccess- ful tragedies.
12 Aristotle's three "uni- ties" of time, place, and action. (See Eng. Lit., p. 99.) 13 extravagant fancy
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
That gives us back the image of our mind. 300 | This, e'en Belinda may vouchsafe to view. As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. For works may have more wit than does them good,
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed, 320 The morning dream that hovered o'er her head; Is like a clown in regal purple dressed: A youth more glittering than a birth-night For different styles with different subjects beau,3 sort,
As several garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style. Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learnèd smile.
(That e'en in slumber caused her cheek to glow)
Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay, And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say:
"Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care Of thousand bright inhabitants of air! If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought, Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught, Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen, The silver token,4 and the circled green, Or virgins visited by angel powers, 330 With golden crowns and wreaths of heavenly flowers;
Unlucky, as Fungoso15 in the play, These sparks with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our grandsires in their doublets drest. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Hear and believe! thy own importance know, Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.
and in the present enlarged form in 1714. The subject, proposed to Pope by one Mr. Caryll, was suggested by a trifling feud that had arisen between two families because Lord Petre, a dapper little baron, had cut a lock from the head of Miss Arabella Fermor ("Belinda"). The opening is in imitation of classic epics, more especially of Virgil's Æneid. The chief addition in the later form is the machinery of sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders, spirits inhabiting air, earth, water, and fire, respectively. Dr. Johnson pro- nounced the poem "the most airy, the most ingenious, and the most delightful" of all the author's compositions, and De Quincey went so far as to declare it "the most exquisite monu- ment of playful fancy that universal literature offers." 4 Silver pieces dropped by fairies into the shoes of tidy maids.
1 Summoning the lady's- maid.
2 A striking-watch. 3 One befitting the royal birthday ball.
« PředchozíPokračovat » |